John's Gone
by Nymph Du Pave
Summary: Slashy Death Fic: Finn's thoughts about John's death.


  
TITLE: John's Gone   
AUTHOR: Nymph Du Pave   
FANDOM: Law & Order: Special Victims Unit   
PAIRING: Munch/Finn   
RATING: G   
SUMMARY: Finn's thoughts about John's death.   
DISCLAIMER: L&O: SVU belongs to Dick Wolf, NBC and whoever else. I have nothing but a sick desire to play with the characters created by them. I earn no wages, just want to have fun.   
FEEDBACK: Kind of depressing, so I'd understand if you didn't have anything to say :)   
AUTHOR'S EMAIL: nymph_du_pave@hotmail.com 

* * *

**John's Gone**

_…john's gone, john's gone, john's gone, john's gone…_

John's gone. That's all that runs through my head. That's all that is there, yet it can't seem to register. Somehow, someway this is wrong, so very wrong. I wish I thought I was dreaming, but I know that it's all too real. Everyone about me moving so quickly, like a time lapse, but I'm standing still, standing still, alone, and numb. I haven't been breathing, I can't feel my breath. 

_…could I be dead, too?…_

Oh, how I wish. But it didn't happen that way. I don't know what happened really. 

_…a flash…_

A flash. 

_…an instant…_

Right. An instant. That's all it took. Gone so fast, so very fast that there really isn't much to replay in my head, but that doesn't stop my masochistic mind from showing what little is there. What little I saw. What little happened to bring down the toughest most cynical man I've ever known. 

_…so fragile…_

Yes, he was that too, but it was our little- 

_…no, big; our big…_

-secret, remember? _Our secret._ People weren't supposed to know; how do they know, how did they find out? How, how, how, how... 

This can't be right. It would take an army to bring him down, and army of the biggest, meanest, deadliest assassins. 

So why isn't he here, shrugging it off with me now?   
  
  
+_+_+_+_+   
  
  


A single slice of time- the smallest, fastest heartbeat- and he's gone. That's all it took. He didn't fight it. He couldn't have. 

There was no moment of goodbye with him in my arms, no time to say what we needed, no moment of closure that one must be lucky enough to find with a catastrophically ailing but still extant partner. 

_…friend…_

Friend. 

_…lover…_

Yes. Lover. 

I see him standing not far from me, poised with his gun, ready to serve and protect. Then I see him drop. I run to his side, worried but not thinking he could be dead, not realizing that the body before me is already dormant and gone to- 

_…me…_

-the world, _this_ world. Not sensing that the single most important element in my life is now in a place from which I'll never be able to take him back. 

I don't sense this, can't guess, so I run to him and grip him in my arms, saying his name, trying to keep him from going into shock before the paramedics arrive, because shock can mean bad things, and oh, John, you don't want to go into shock so please, please, for Heaven's sake, wake up. 

As I hold him there wondering why he's not responding to my voice, _my voice_ of all things, my mind pulls up an incident, and I try to stop it from relaying, don't want to think of the connection, no don't want to correlate the two separate and so very different- 

_…not _that_ different…_

-incidents, but my mind will not let it go. My brain with cruel intent reminds me of the time my other best friend died. I was only nine years old and Oddler, my beautiful black Labrador- black like ink, or pupils, or the sky between the stars- ran into the street, ran across at the wrong time. I didn't see it, but I heard him yelp. I saw him lying there, and I ran to him crying because he's hurt, screaming because we had to get him to the vet _now_. My mother ran out beside me and told me, tears brimming in her large, round eyes, that he was asleep, and we had to let him sleep. He was asleep and he wasn't going to wake up because that's how puppies left this world. They fell asleep and sometimes the dreams were so good that they didn't want to come back. They found a better place. 

_…let him sleep…_

Oh, god. 

_…he's found a better place…_

I hug him to me. "Not without me." I whisper, I plead, the tears streaming. "Please, no. Not without me."   
  
  
+_+_+_+_+   
  
  


The bullet wasn't meant for me. If it was it would be easier, I think, because then there'd be a reason for the guilt, this guilt that I feel like an ulcer in the stomach, only it doesn't stop there. It's gotten to my heart and my mind as well. Into my soul. 

Since it was a bullet with no name, no initials, no mission other than to drive itself into any miscellaneous body enforcing the laws... Since I had nothing to do with his death, could not have foreseen it or prevented it, the guilt will not kill me. It will just eat at me until I die, old and rotten and no good to anyone because it wasn't my fault and yet I take culpability. 

Because of this I am left with an abstract pain, filled with grief and sorrow, and I know that I will never be empty, humanely empty, because all of the above will never leave me. There is a lightless, colorless void within me. It is the place where I once hung my heart. But now that's gone and this fact renders me useless to anything alive. 

Everywhere else in me should be so mercifully vacant of all expression, but, unfortunately, everywhere else is where the pain has decided to dwell. 

All life now seems trivial, pointless. Lifeless. 

As I sit in the back of the ambulance watching strangers cover the body of my partner, my friend, my lover, I see something move out of the corner of my eye. I look over to find the sun shining down on the beautiful man-made lake, making it shimmy with transient white jewels, jewels that have no place in the phony reservoir of cobalt liquid. 

The same rays of the late day saffron sun hit the leaves of the trees just as they rustle in the wind. The leaves suddenly transform colors in their opaque beauty: greens of abysmal deepness; blazing, effulgent greens; and median greens, as sweet to look at as sugar is to taste. As the rustling proceeds, the colors continue to morph, shading richer then fading then sharpening then back to start again. They are enriching in the spontaneous moment, and they make me want to capture it forever. 

_…john…_

It's his goodbye. These meteoric hues were his way of bestowing the best closure that he could. 

_…oh, how I desire truth in that ideal…_   
  
  
+_+_+_+_+   
  
  


In that instant, the "before and after" of Central Park's momentary perfection, the world had tried to emulate my time spent with John, tried to capture his aura, his personality. Tried to show me in an instant what I had lost in an instant, and had lost for good. 

Though I grasped it's intention, it's beauty eluded me, for I had seen greater. In all it's splendor, it had still fallen terribly short. 

I knew from then on the world to me would be a monochromatic visage, and only in my dreams would I dare to approach what life could have been if John had not left me for a better place. 

All life will forever seem trivial, because he's gone. 

John's gone.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**FIN**


End file.
